Hi - You might check www.allmusic.com (click). The information on Isla Cameron there is quite interesting. Maybe some nice person with a real computer will copy-paste the article into this thread.-Joe Offer on WEBTV-

(I don't know if I quite qualify as a "nice person", but here is the article--

Isla Cameron was one of a quartet of key figures in England's postwar folksong revival — and to give a measure of her importance, the other three were Ewan MacColl, A. L. Lloyd, and Alan Lomax. Her public singing career began quite by accident — she was a member of a theater workshop run by Joan Littlewood, who was then the wife of Ewan MacColl (1915-1989), when she and MacColl met backstage.

They began a long friendship and professional relationship, and MacColl helped secure Cameron's first recording, an unusual unaccompanied performance of "The Fair Flower of Northumberland," which was released as a 78-rpm disc by EMI in the early '50s. Cameron became one of the most popular woman folksingers of her day, and performed regularly in clubs throughout the British isles — she had a special affinity for songs from Dorset and Somerset, having grown up there.

Cameron had always set her sights on an acting career in addition to her singing, and by the late '50s she began appearing in movies as well as on stage — she played small roles in the drama Room At the Top (1958), The Innocents (1961), and Nightmare (1963), and a somewhat larger part in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie (1969). Cameron was to have played an on-screen role in John Schlesinger's Far From The Madding Crowd (1967), but her scenes were cut — it was no matter, however, for her most important contribution to that film was as music advisor to Schlesinger and composer Richard Rodney Bennett.

She chose the songs heard in the film, recruited the other folk artists who worked on the movie, including Fairport Convention alumnus Trevor Lucas and fiddler Dave Swarbrick, and was responsible for the recording of the folksongs on the soundtrack album, and did the singing for Julie Christie in the film. Cameron continued to record into the mid-1960's, expanding her repertory to include modern material by Bob Dylan, Kurt Weill, and Bertolt Brecht. Her pioneering work in the 1950's paved the way for such figures as Sandy Denny and Fairport Convention, and opened English folk music to a wider audience than it had been perceived as having.

Cameron seldom sang in public after the mid-'60s, however, as acting became more the focus of her life. She died in a tragic accident in her home during 1980. — Bruce Eder

Whilst searching for Isla Cameron songs on YouTube (there are quite a few, once you start delving!), I came across this number from 1966 : "Glass of Water" (lyrics by the late Sydney Carter to a traditional Cretan melody), which she sings, accompanied by Martin Carthy : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A2aWqz6Dbv0

As an aside, once, when asking for "a glass of water" while dining in a Greek restaurant in Melbourne, I was told by the waiter that he was unable to assist me, but suggested an address further along the street. With great mirth, he then explained that the expression is slang in Greece as a euphemism for, shall we say, a girl of a certain calling, or for the service provided.

There was an obituary in the 1981 issue of the Folk Music Journal, written by Shirley Abicair, who wrote that Isla died after mis-swallowing some food. There was also reference to a tribute in Melody Maker by Karl Dallas. In her latter years, Isla was a TV researcher. Derek

We bought books from bookseller, Stanley Smith, in London in the 1980s/90 - a large number of our Folk. song/folklore books came from those he bought from broadside excpert, Leslie Shepherd. A year or so after we bought the main lot, we had a phone call from him (he had then moved to Hampstead) - he told us he had acquired a small collection from the estate of a lady who had recently died They turned out to Be Isla Cameron's collection - a treasure trove of books and magazines from the early revival - one-off's like a bound edition of MacColl's play, Uranium 235, complete with contemporary reviews of the play, signeed copies of song collections All of them bore Isla's signature - apparently she died sometime in the 1980s in North London Apart from he singing, she was an actress - I think she appeared as the maid in the filmed version of Henry James's short ghost story, The Turn of the Screw (released as 'The Innocents' Jim Carroll

"according to the thread just two above your own Isla died in 1981. " Thanks Hoot - didn't realise it was so long ago - wasn't at home when I posted this morning so I didn't have time to read through the postings Jim